


without me | mcreyes

by dxntdxdrxgs



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Jesse Is Hurt, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, gabe doesn’t become reaper, time gaps, undead mccree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 06:20:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17678087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dxntdxdrxgs/pseuds/dxntdxdrxgs
Summary: The day Jesse left, it was because his heart stopped.His blood no longer coursed through him and he was deathly pale now, eyes a bright and glowing green that added to the whole camp-y Bollywood monster vibe he had going on, but he didn’t mind much. Not now. Moira had promised Jesse that if he stood in for the experiments, she would spare Gabe, and that was enough for him to sign away everything he had within him. He was just glad something was keeping his brain alive.Jesse couldn’t work properly with his face mangled like that. His hair turned silver and dull like his skin, including his beard, and Jesse once again adorned a bandana like he had all those years ago in Deadlock. Only difference was this one had the bottom of a skull, a distant reminder that who was once in residence of that body was well and truly dead. He wished the thought bothered him more than it did.





	without me | mcreyes

**Author's Note:**

> my brain shit itself and was like reaper!mcree and i rly wanted to write an undead mcree onseshot so have this

Jesse nurses the thoughts he has of his younger life; he laughs when he thinks of it now, when he thinks of all the things Gabriel tried so desperately to shield him from, and keep him from becoming. Jesse thinks of the way Moira lied to them both, and he doesn’t feel anger anymore, not like he’s sure he can anyway. Numbness was a new and pleasant feeling, Jesse had found, all those years ago. And when the side of his face started to split and rot off, he only mourned the fact that he was becoming a grotesque and ugly thing, unlovable and monstrous and evil.

 

Jesse didn’t have SEP to soften all the affects of Moira’s testing, and the day his chest seized and he stumbled into her office with wide eyes, he knew he had to leave before anything else got worse. Before he got worse. Gabe didn’t ask to many questions, and it wasn’t until many years later that Jesse learned he’d been played by their very own doctor, and he felt so much bitter hatred at the thought that he feared he might burst.

 

The day Jesse left, it was because his heart stopped.

 

His blood no longer coursed through him and he was deathly pale now, eyes a bright and glowing green that added to the whole camp-y Bollywood monster vibe he had going on, but he didn’t mind much. Not now. Moira had promised Jesse that if he stood in for the experiments, she would spare Gabe, and that was enough for him to sign away everything he had within him. He was just glad something was keeping his brain alive.

 

Jesse couldn’t work properly with his face mangled like that. His hair turned silver and dull like his skin, including his beard, and Jesse once again adorned a bandana like he had all those years ago in Deadlock. Only difference was this one had the bottom of a skull, a distant reminder that who was once in residence of that body was well and truly dead. He wished the thought bothered him more than it did.

 

There are a few close run-ins with the newly formed Overwatch that do spark a few things, deep and aching within him. When he’s got Genji Shimada underneath his boot he can’t shoot, can’t even get Peacekeeper out, and he slips away in a cloud of smoke and anger and pain and regret— and Genji sits on the rooftop, plate away from his eyes as he cries and screams Jesse’s name. It makes his chest feel fuller than it ever has.

 

But Jesse is a monster.

 

Gabriel Reyes used to be one, or so Jesse thought the second the man had snatched him out of that dustbowl and drug him back to civilization. Jesse had tried to fuck the commander the second the man offered him a room and food, because that’s just how things worked, wasn’t it? Adult men never did anything nice for Jesse McCree without the promise of something in return, and he assumed Gabe was no exception to this rule.

 

Only he was.

 

He’d been so polite in turning him down that McCree had sobbed in embarrassment and frustration, telling Gabe he was an asshole for doing that and for being so goddamn nice— and Gabe had just held him. He told Jesse he was a part of Blackwatch now, a family, and more than due for some video games and relaxation like any normal teenager. And Jesse hadn’t known how to play a thing, or even relax and just exist, but Gabe taught him that too, and they continued to have Saturday night game nights until Jesse was twenty-five.

 

Every man gets older though, and the closeness he and Gabe shared was paternal, wasn’t it? Jesse was conflicted now, maturing fast and looking up only to Gabe and even Jack for notes on how to act and carry himself. But he had all these feelings now, this complicated cacophony of want and lust and eagerness that he once again thrust on Gabe with fervor. Once again, he was turned down, only this time the rejection was internalized and ate at Jesse for well over three months.

 

Why was he never good enough for Gabriel Reyes? Was is Jack? Jesse focused on him, on the perfect strike commander, and he hated everything the man had that he didn’t. Jesse was darker skinned, caught in a limbo of racial ambiguity which stressed him to no end— what was he? What was his culture? Did he have any? And then there was Jack Morrison, pale and clean and beautiful and Jesse struggled to grasp that, to understand why Gabe liked him _so_ much more. Was it because of that? Jack’s blond hair and blue eyes and light complexion?

 

Genji found Jesse in the showers one night, water blistering hot, scrubbing until he brought blood that cascaded down his raw skin like rivulets. Genji had grabbed him, held his face in his hands, and said in the sweetest, broken Spanish, “eres hermoso.” And then, in Japanese, “kawaranai de.”

 

Jesse had hurt himself, seriously, and Angela had forced a psych evaluation on him directly after the incident, which forced a label of “internalized racism” on him, which he never understood, and Genji once again had to explain to him. He’d taken him by the shoulders gently and said, “white supremacy has got your brain by the balls.”

 

Realistically, Jesse matured more and realized Jack was closer to Reyes’ age and they were best friends, destined to stay that way for years and years to come. Jesse had issues he had to sort, self hatred buried deep in his bones and so imbedded within him that even when he died, it did not. Gabe gave him reassurances when he could but never what Jesse so craved.

 

The last day at Watchpoint: Gibraltar that they spent together, the day Jesse left and the day Gabriel returned to the Swiss base, they sat together on the edge of a building. Jesse was unusually still, due to the decreased need for breathing and other bodily functions, all his organs slowly dying, one by one as Gabriel Reyes sat to his right, bathed in golden sunlight and warmth.

 

“You’re beautiful,” a twenty-seven year old Jesse said, and Gabriel smiled at him.

 

“Not this again.”

 

“I mean it, Gabe. You’re beautiful. And I think I’m in love with you.”

 

It was awkward, Jesse accepted that, but it was the god’s honest truth. He loved the man sitting beside him, the man who’d finally taken that damn beanie off and let Jesse watch the soft, textured curls sway in the wind. The man who looked at him, sad, and let him down one last time.

 

“Shut up, kid.”

 

Leaving is a whole lot easier when you have no one to care enough to stop you. Some part of Jesse wished that Gabriel had been the one to try and stop him, keep him there on that tarmac, but instead it was a teary-eyed Lena Oxton who stared with her big wide gaze and begged him not to go. She told him he was a hero, a good man, that he couldn’t throw ten years down the drain. He told her it could join his life in the gutter, and boarded the transport.

 

He noticed that the changes were slow, and then he was picked up by Moira again, who painlessly accelerated things and made McCree into a literal walking zombie, and into Talon’s best and brightest bounty hunter, though that was never something he was proud of. And he remembers the way he got news of the Swiss base, connected to tubes as his life was quite literally sapped out of him, and he wished so desperately that he could’ve felt something.

 

He did, when Gabriel’s picture flashed on screen. He felt pain, hate, love, anger, remorse, terror, every goddamn thing in the book, before it all fizzled out. Sombra liked to prod at him and say that he was more fun than Amélie because there was still something there, something in him, and he simply laughed and patted her head. It was a hollow sound that made her skin crawl every time. Like a death rattle, or wind creeping through a graveyard and dragging its fingertips along every tombstone it could reach.

 

He sees Lena out once, too. When they try to take the gauntlet that is rightly Talon’s, rightly Doomfist’s, and he spots Winston, who keeps two kids out of McCree’s deadeye. It infuriates him and makes him yell with a broken rage, an unused voice tearing and shredding itself to pieces. Lena cries, she does, torn like Genji had been before Winston forces her to retreat from McCree, whose bandana is down to display his scowl. He curses Overwatch, curses them all, and his heart screams with pain and new life and it takes a small beat, a chitter of life, and he howls again before Amélie knocks him out.

 

Jesse tries to forget everything, forget that Overwatch is back and his past is tailing him like an ex with a vengeance. He tries to ignore the way he hopes he’ll see them, his old commanders, men and women presumed dead who’d scathed their way through and remained in tact. He hopes he sees them until he finally does.

 

Jack is wearing a visor and covered in scars. Ana is Ana, just older now and white haired. Gabe is still himself, just in a cloak now and strapped to the brim with ammo. He doesn’t wear a mask like the others and it catches Jesse off guard, just like the shot that hits him in the arm and makes him cry out, before he turns around. He can’t shoot.

 

They’re in Deadlock Gorge, home, and they’re on the road. All three of them have their guns raised at Jesse and he wants to do something, make them shoot him and end him end something but he just can’t. The wind is whistling and quiet and his mechanical hand shakily moves to keep his bandana in place, suddenly self conscious and seventeen again.

 

“My son,” Ana says, voice broken and hoarse with tears as she stumbles forward, “my _son_.”

 

McCree’s hand shakes violently and he has to let go of his bandana to hold it steady. He’s aimed at her but she drops her gun. She tells him they thought he was dead, they thought he was gone forever, but he’s not and Jesse wants to yell and tell her she’s wrong. He’s dead. Nothing is keeping him there.

 

“It’s not him,” Jack says gruffly and Jesse steels himself against the red visor. “We have to kill it.”

 

Jesse’s voice is rough and filled to the brim with grit and years of unresolved anger.

 

“I invite you to try.”

 

Jack is the first and only one to shoot, because Ana dives for his gun and knocks it to the ground with a heavy and full clatter, and Jesse is doubled over now, an ugly black sludge leaking slowly from his wounds. He knows he’s fine, knows that it’s healing, but he feels so goddamn betrayed and every single hole in him hurts.

 

“Jack, don’t,” Ana pleads. “Gabe! Talk to him!”

 

“That’s not him,” Gabe said shakily, and it sounded like he was trying to convince himself

more than the others, and Jesse feels the pain of rejection coiling again in his gut.

 

“Of course it’s not,” Jesse calls back, face contorting in anger, “not convenient, is it, Commander Reyes?”

 

Gabriel goes deathly still and Jesse lets out a bark of laughter.

 

“Cat got your tongue now, Jefe?”

 

“Jesse!” Ana pleads again, desperate and painfully aware of where this is headed. “We were told you died. We thought you were dead.”

 

“Didn’t take.”

 

Sombra appears beside Jesse and startled the three in front of them, leaning cooly against the corpse beside her as she tuts.

 

“Boss says wheels up in ten, McCree,” she smiles at their faces, “what a waste of talent, eh?”

 

“I’m not going back,” Jesse says, and Sombra doesn’t seem the least bit shocked.

 

“I know.”

 

“I got some unfinished business.”

 

“I know,” she repeats. Her heart extends itself and leaves a lasting, warm imprint in its wake. “You know where to find me when you need me, Jesse.”

 

He nods and lets her disappear once more, before Gabe speaks again.

 

“Talon?”

 

“Overwatch?” Jesse is gruff and holsters Peacekeeper. Jack has his gun aimed at his head when he starts to approach again. McCree scoffs. “I wish it was that simple, Commander.”

 

He disappears in a cloud of smoke and regret, leaving Ana to sob and cling to Gabe with all she has in her. For the first time in forever, Jesse feels guilt as he hides behind the sign atop the gas station to watch the trio’s retreat. Ana was caught in the crossfire of bad decisions and Jesse’s naive lovestruck heart, which was never something she signed up for. She had wholeheartedly raised him like her own, being a steady and guiding hand through all his tumultuous disasters and the pains of adolescence, and he raised Fareeha to look up to him, always told her he was an honorable man, and god— he jerked his bandana back and dry heaved and coughed on that dirty roof, chest constricting painfully as something bounced in his chest. Something that died a long ago.

 

He laid down and let the hot sun bake his icy skin, burning deep and internal in a way Jesse didn’t know was possible. He remembers being alive, being himself, and he misses it. He misses being happy and being a good man, loving his friends and—

 

He misses Gabriel.

 

He sleeps on the roof that night, until two am, and he smokes his way into one of the local rat motels that he knows they’ll all be in. No big UN budgets now. And he finds that room, 224, and he smokes through the cracks and materializes like a cryptid at the foot of Gabriel Reyes’ bed.

 

The man jumps like he’s been shot, before his warm eyes set a fire wherever they see Jesse’s skin and the younger man so suddenly feels like his drowning, face down in an arctic cold river with ice crystallizing in his very veins. Because Gabe is crying, he’s crying and holding onto his face with such desperate and warm hands, flinching when McCree jerks away, eyes wide and fearful.

 

“S-Stop, stop, you— you never wanted—“ he protests weakly but fails, letting Gabe jerk the bandana off in one fell swoop. Jesse is a mess of tears at this point too, turning his face to keep the mangled left jaw from Gabe’s field of view, embarrassed and terrified and so, so ugly. “Don’t look, please...”

 

Gabe doesn’t listen, turning Jesse’s head and sucking in a breath at the pink, scarred flesh there. Jesse’s back teeth are exposed and he cries harder, young and scared and he grabs for Gabriel like the man is the only thing Jesse has ever wanted, and there’s quite a bit of truth to that.

 

“What did she do to you?” Gabe asked hoarsely, and Jesse wanted to throw up again.

 

“You knew...?”

 

“I knew something was wrong when she suddenly didn’t need my body anymore,” Gabe whispers and he rubs a delicate finger over the wound before Jesse winces, and he instead diverts to wipe the scarily cold tears. 

 

“She made me a monster, they, I, I wanted to save you, I wanted you to want me—“

 

“You were young, Jesse,” Gabe shushes, unwrapping the seraph from the boy’s shoulders and snapping the heavy, cold chest plate off. McCree doesn’t protest. “I wanted you so bad, so long, but I was so afraid of taking advantage of you. What if it was just a fleeting crush?”

 

Jesse shakes his head and goes to speak, but there’s a pair of lips on his and Jesse shoved him back with a painful wail. He curls in on himself and doubles over, pulling desperately at his hair when he knocks his hat off. He panics when Gabe goes to touch him again, jerking back and slamming into the wall, busting a mirror and weakly keeping away from him.

 

“I’m a monster, Gabe, don’t— I can’t—“ he’s hyperventilating now, something he didn’t know was even possible anymore as he didn’t even need to breathe, and Gabe grabs him again and he chokes on a wounded noise, giving up and falling into his arms. “I’m ugly, so, so ugly and cold and dead and...”

 

“You’re okay,” Gabe whispers, “you’re Jesse McCree, no matter what you look like.”

 

“I’m a dead man walking.”

 

“And I’ve loved you all these years,” Gabe cuts in, kissing the cool crown of the boy’s head, “and if you’ll have me, if you’ll let me, I swear to god I’ll make it up to you.”

 

“Y’don’t wanna fix me...?”

 

“You’d have to be broken first, Jess.”


End file.
